Restitution #8
“Ascutati, my ladies, my gentlemen!” he said, his eyes roving over the crowd, confident, easy, in his element. “I pray pardon for our precipitous entrance, but we have come far, and all to entertain you, worthy patrons.”
To a chorus of gasps, he stepped upon the rim of the ornamental fountain, shaking his glossy hair back with a look of theatrical ecstasy as spray fell upon his face. His eyes snapped open.
“Our thesis today,” he said, his voice carrying easily across the crowd, “is plenty… and privation. Abundance can exist in the most unlikely of places, it is true. But in plenitude, too, there can be peculiar pockets of want.”
He clicked his fingers. The silence and stillness were unaffected. He held his pose.
Gradually, the fountain turned pink. Then darker and darker, the colour spread in each of the basins and overflowed to the next, until all was a deep, luxurious red.
“A drink!” the conjurer said and, with a flourish, produced a long-stemmed glass from his pocket.
He held it out to a stream of the red liquid and, when caught in the glass, it looked uncannily like wine.
He made to drink, but as his lips approached the rim of the glass, in a blink, it was empty.
People laughed as the man frowned and refilled the glass, only to have the same thing happen.
Just where the liquid went wasn’t clear.
“How can a man’s cellars be full, and yet he may not find a drop to drink in the house?”
The laughter grew more general, and the conjurer jumped down.
“And how is it,” he went on, as he strolled to a trestle table set against the terrace’s balustrade, laden with wine and glistening towers of stacked glasses, “that one might have cupboards full of linens, yet the moment they are needed, there are none clean? Have some of them, perhaps, vanished?”
He raised his hands, his eyes unmistakably on the trailing hem of the white tablecloth on which all the bottles and glasses sat. Muted sounds of distress came involuntarily from the crowd. Someone, probably Colonel Fitzwilliam, chuckled in anticipation of the carnage.
The man whipped the tablecloth from the table.
Nothing fell, and, what was more, the tablecloth seemed to go on forever.
The conjurer pulled and pulled, his arms a blur, the white fabric flowing behind him and accumulating in a snowy drift.
At last, with a final tug, the last of the cloth whipped from beneath the glasses with a pure chime, and all remained standing.
The conjurer bowed as the applause rang out.
“At least a wealthy man can always be assured of a good meal,” the man went on, smiling broadly as he made his way through the crowd and, with uncanny accuracy, picked out Charles Bingley and made his way to him.
He bowed deeply, as to an emperor, and then, to mingled gasps and laughter, threw an arm familiarly around his shoulder.
“I have always loved poached fowl, the breast delicate and tender, savouring of sage and onion and marjoram. Do you not agree, my friend?”
Charles laughed heartily and called out, so everyone could hear: “My dear, magical fellow, you have the absolute right of it!”
Releasing the master of the house, the magician raised his hands again.
“On the anniversary of the birth of our generous host, who shall say he may not eat before us? Perhaps a little foretaste of the feast to come, for an excellent fellow?”
Cries of “Hear, hear!” and “Capital, yes indeed!” echoed around the company. The conjurer took a large handkerchief, lifted it in front of him, and jiggled it portentously.
“So shall it be,” he said, “a dish of fowl!”
He whipped the handkerchief away, and there, on a plate held flat on his palm, stood a chicken. An intact, decidedly uncooked chicken. It clucked, ruffled its white feathers, and fluttered to the ground to the great amusement of the guests.
With a frown, the magician went among the company, twitching gentlemen’s coats and the hems of ladies’ gowns aside, each time revealing another white chicken who joined its fellows until, within a minute, the terrace was covered in at least a dozen hens running about, pecking at the gravel and giving voice, red crests flopping like Jacobin caps.
Throwing up his hands as though in exasperation amid the laughter, the wizard stalked over to stand on the top of the short flight of steps that led into the house, where Mr Heaver stood ready to welcome the guests in for lunch.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried the conjurer, “I thank you for your kind attention! You have had the pleasure of observing that which appears real and yet is so much illusion. A phantasm. Yes, lords and ladies, you have witnessed the powers of me, Il Miraggio!”
He glanced in through the doors at the dining table.
“Alas, it seems we have no more time,” he said, with a strange emphasis.
Then, turning to Mr Heaver, he plunged his hand into the butler’s breast pocket, withdrew a silver pocket watch, and glanced at it.
Descending the steps again, Il Miraggio sought Charles’s eye in the crowd and tossed the watch high into the air in a perfect juggler’s throw.
The sun struck it at the apex of its flight before it descended, and Charles, eyes and mouth wide, caught it with a jingle.
“So, you found it?” Bingley asked his butler.
It was the following morning. The magician, having stayed the night, was now happily installed below stairs, eating an improbable quantity of bacon and eggs.
Most of the guests had departed, and now Bingley and Darcy were in their accustomed places in the morning room after breakfast, while Jane was in the corner with her book.
Bingley held his watch as though he could not yet entirely trust it to his pocket again. Mr Heaver stood in the centre of a rug. Perspiration shone on his brow, though the morning sun had barely had a chance to warm the room.
“Yes, sir,” Heaver mumbled.
“Well, I’m jolly pleased,” said Bingley, pleasantly. “But when? Where?”
“Near the… brook, sir. Perhaps… yesterday, but with the party, the time didn’t… ah… present itself.”
Bingley frowned.
“But did not you and I review the accounts yesterday morning? Surely you could not have gone to find it during the party. Thursday morning, then?”
“Yes, sir… Thursday morning it was. I apologise, sir, it must have slipped my mind when we spoke.”
“Hmm,” said Bingley. He clicked the cover of his watch shut with one finger and raised his eyebrows. “Ah, well. My thanks for recovering it, Mr Heaver. You may go.”
Heaver only turned towards the door before it opened to reveal Mrs Darcy. She was holding a large, leather-bound ledger.
“Just a moment, Charles,” she said. “I rather think Mr Heaver ought to stay.”
Mr Heaver paled at the sight of the book, and paler still as two figures stepped into the room behind Elizabeth. Robson and Sarah.
“Robson!” cried Bingley, leaping from his chair, rushing over, and grasping the man by the hand, “What a feat! My goodness, I had wondered what became of you, and then there you are! The coach, the fireworks, and Il Miraggio himself. Upon my honour, after all these years! How did you do it?”
“Charles,” said Elizabeth, “you must do all this later. Over the past four and twenty hours, Sarah and I have committed a minor act of arson, effected the clandestine liberation of evidence and, God help us, engaged in premeditated accountancy. I am sure you will agree that, as diversions, they are quite devoid of satisfaction unless we are allowed our denouement.”
Elizabeth intercepted a look from her husband, and a wordless current of meaning seemed to flow between them.
“What?” she asked. “None of you will play me at chess anymore, and my sister and brother have seen fit to fill their library with every single book I have read and not a one that I have not. I must take my entertainment where I can. Besides, it will right a grave injustice and save you, Charles, a small fortune. That man—” she pointed at Heaver with the book “—has, over the last ten months, stolen seventeen pounds, nineteen shillings and thruppence from the household accounts.”
Mr Heaver fell straight backwards and lay insensible on the carpet.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” cried Elizabeth once they had determined he yet lived and Robson had deposited him on a settee. “Well, we shall have to call Mrs Kerridge. I believe she is the prime mover in any case.”
Mrs Kerridge duly arrived. She stepped into the room with a certain admirable dignity and stood where Mr Heaver had. Robson moved to cover the door behind her.
“Mrs Kerridge,” said Mrs Darcy, briskly. “I am the notoriously meddlesome Mrs Darcy, and your mistress is my sister. It has come to my attention that you and Mr Heaver have been steadily robbing my brother, and the total is now approaching eighteen pounds. What say you?”
“I say, as you do, that you are not my mistress, but her sister,” said Mrs Kerridge, her voice cool and level.
“I owe you no explanations. And I add that you are no magistrate. As such, while I know it is the unfortunate habit of some highborn ladies and gentlemen to make sport of their servants before their friends, I will respectfully decline the amusement and be about my work.”
To everyone’s surprise, and before Elizabeth could reply, Jane set her book aside, rose, and came to stand directly in front of her housekeeper. Her sister gave way with a kind of awe.
“I, on the other hand, am your mistress and do require an explanation. What is the charge, Mrs Darcy?”
Elizabeth tapped the book.
“You’ve been inflating orders. Linens, poultry, wine. You write receipts for more goods than arrive. You are clever, you make the ledger match the false receipts, but I checked the merchants’ prices. Uniformly, across each order, an extra fifty per cent.”
Mrs Kerridge shrugged. “Merchants, alas, are dishonest. If they are overcharging, it can have nothing to do with me”.